Alice Meynell

Biography

(1847-1922)

Though she is most famous for her poetry, Alice Meynell was a prolific essayist and personally believed her strength lie in her prose. She was born in England and raised in France where she and her family converted to Catholicism when Alice was 21. In France she met and married Wilfrid Meynell, and together they worked in editing and publishing The Merry England a Catholic Periodical, for almost two decades. Alice was a regular contributor to almost every major periodical in England and published dozens of books of poetry and prose. Preludes(1875) was her first book of poetry and was met with admiration by readers and critics alike. Among her published essay collections are The Spirit of Place(1898), Ceres' Runaway and Other Essays(1909), and Essays(1914).

There are the multitudes to whom civilization has given little but its reaction, its rebound, its chips, its refuse, its shavings, sawdust and waste, its failures; to them solitude is a right foregone or a luxury unattained.

The spirit of place, which is to be seen in the shapes of the fields and the manner of the crops, to be felt in a prevalent wind, breathed in the breath of the earth, overheard in a far street-cry or in the tinkle of some black-smith, calls out and peals in the cathedral bells.

The sun that leaps from a mountain peak is a sun past the dew of his birth; he has walked some way towards the common fires of noon. But on the flat country the uprising is early and fresh, the arc is wide, the career is long.

It is true that the movements of young children are quick, but a very little attention would prove how many apparent disconnexions there are between the lively motion and the first impulse; it is not the brain that is quick.

The woman in grey had a watchful confidence not only in a multitude of men but in a multitude of things. And it is very hard for any untrained human being to practise confidence in things in motion--things full of force, and, what is worse, of forces.

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Quotidiana is an online anthology of "classical" essays, from antiquity to the early twentieth century. All essays and images are in the public domain. Commentaries are copyrighted, but may be used with proper attribution. Special thanks to the BYU College of Humanities and English Department for funding, and to Joey Franklin and Lara Burton, for tireless research assisting.